It Starts With a Birthstone...

  Um pass. ..

  Get your Friko on . A poor attempt at a gag perhaps . But there are clearly worse things you could do on a dark Tuesday moving towards the...

  If in doubt and the world seems a bad and dangerousr place. And that seems to be the case more than it's ever been right now. Retreat ...

  Fairly ghastly also runts of the Grunge pack. Lots of fairly horrific jamming that would have been pretty annoying in 1972. Never mind 199...

  Tom Waits was a key formative inspirational influence on me when I came upon him in my late teens on  the early Eighties. He spoke of a re...

   German Error Message. I like a good band or artist name. The obscurer, and more literary the better. The Velvet Underground  The Doors, S...

  What's the score George Dawes. No nothng to do with Jim Morrison. Or Shooting Stars fir that matter. Dawes are another Los Angeles ban...

 

  Well this is a fantastic avant Jazz record and no mistake. Lovely way to get from 11 to 12 on a sunny Friday morning. 

  With the kind of full on emotive bloodletting rarely seen outside of a Kate Bush album, the new Spellling record  The Turning Wheel  proba...

  Hot on the heels of Black Ends wonderful debut, here are New Yorks's finest The Mystery Lights. Walking a similar walk. These guys sho...

  Black Ends are out of Seattle, Washington and from what I can detect Psychotic Spew is their first album. They describe theselves as Gunk...

 

  From King Crimson to The Gun Club. Much more down my personal cul de sac really. Gun Club are desperation. Wanton abandon. Encouraging wou...

  King Crimson for muchof the time is far too fussy for my tastes. This seems to be a band that are fed by urgent, spectrum impulses.With th...

  Chicago's Varsity have been round the block a few times. Playing the circuit and putting out records for over a decade now, becoming t...

  The latest tip from Darren Jones for It Starts and an instant winner.. Third House, the latest album from Austin Texas quintet,  Cast Of T...

 

  The Sisters of Mercy mastered the immaculate chilled Goth sound.as well as anybody ever did.

  Stephen Duffy decide he didn't particularly want to be in Duran Duran. He decided he'd rather focus his energies on jangling, buco...

  A 63 year old Grandma living on the Northeast side of Indianopolis. Delving into R&B, Funk and Spiritual Soul on latest album Double M...

  How Will I Live Without You  A quite outstanding new album from Loma a trio on  Sub Pop Records  A record which I started listening to yes...

 

  I have friends who concern themselves with debating about what the finest Fall albums are. I'm not sure I can be bothered with all tha...

  Utopian dancefloor vibes. Speckled with samples and orgasmic ecstasy. If that's your bag. And there are worse things. 2015's One L...

  Mercury Rev's Born Horses . A late career classc from a band of American dreamers. They're a band I have been able to take and lea...

  Always searching for something. Gut Health's Stiletto should more than do the trick as we make our way into Tuesday morning and my 8....

 

  Au Pairs are a band that seem as elevant as thet evr were. Gender issues, assettion, stridency, drawing of lines where it's required. ...

  If I'm asked to choose later period Paul Weller. Paul Weller discovering thejoys of walking in the Surrey Hills and discovering the jo...

  London's Seafarers are story tellers and I'm always eager to endorse that basic guiding principle. Latest album  Another State  is...

  Hey I don't mind a bit of introverted Rock earnestness. R.E.M.. as this blog attests were one of my formative and enduring joys.. They...

 

  I mean seriously. The Stones have been washed u as a serious musical force since 1982. This is from 1988. Alright if you like old blues li...

  Forty minutes with Beiruit is always a pleasure. Particularly on a Sunday morning as I prepare myself for church. They have a unique schti...

  Good to travel. Good to be home. Odysseus. Someone like that. Waking up in Newcastle after a big adventure in Sicily. Home from the sea. A...

  This will do. A good tempered and jolly album called SUNSHINE from a cuddly ball of facial hear and positive intention from the American r...

 

  What d'you mean never heard of him? The ultimate go to record for cooler than thou types. Good luck with actually listening to it mind...

  Buzzcocks in 78. It didn't get much better. I was 13 and they probably described my state better than anyone else in the world that ye...

  HEY EVERYBODY! THERE'S A GREAT NEW HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE ALBUM OUT ! IT'S CALLED DISASTER TRICK !!! The wotld gives an incoherent s...

  The ludicrously hyperbolic nature of Spotify bios is an ongoing source of frustration for me when trying to write about recotds I come ac...

 

 A repost for this:  '(Cathal) Coughlan is that rare, arguably unique beast: a truly gifted satirist, plying his art in a rock'n...

  Soul love. Bill Callahan is one of those artists who taps in to a hudden miraculous world of beauty and truth. He taps into it, opens a se...

  There are records that I immediately think of as  Juno Culture  as soon as I hear them.A couple of gloopy teenagers sat out on the porch s...

  Towards the weekend and the fitness centre with Hard Quartet's eponymous album a fluid, uncompromisng alternative guitar album that ma...

 

  Some people are prone to say that the best Rock music has already been made.Frankly I think it's  preposterous idea. Just as the idea ...

  The Kinks at their rawest in their infant days. Their are some Spinal Tap moments frankly. The hit singles that broke them You Really Got ...